Deadly Sweet Mother
by joudama
Summary: Adrasteia Rhapsodos hates this child.


**Title:** Deadly Sweet Mother**  
Warnings:** Child abuse of the Bad Touch variety. x_x**  
Summary: **_Deadly sweet mother, with hatred, nausea blooms._**  
A\N:** ...I _hate_ my brain. ;_; Anything inspired by the fucked-up version of Dir en Grey's "embryo" is not going to be a happy, functional story. If I never write another fic like this, GOOD. Oh, and "Chímaira" references a fic I did recently, "The Griffin and the Chimera." I also made up names for Genesis' parents. In both cases, pillaging Greek mythology FTW.

--

The little monster is sleeping.

Hewley told us today, and just today, exactly what kind of monster ShinRa had given us. ShinRa hadn't told us much of anything, other than "Here's a baby, we want regular reports," but the fact that one of their scientists, who wasn't from anywhere near Banora and didn't speak the local dialect at all, showed up to live here with her own baby in tow made it very clear that this wasn't just a gift from ShinRa. We'd gotten little things out of both Hewley and Hollander when he would contact us--Hollander was a motormouth, and he was the one who first let slip that the boy was a failed experiment.

Who knew what that meant? I don't think Hewley told us everything, for all she said she did. She's a terrible liar, but she's stubborn.

He's been throwing temper tantrums at school. Terrible ones, all because they put him and Hewley's brat in different homerooms. Apparently he'd gotten it in his head that since they were together their first year of school, it would be like that every year, and finding out otherwise set him off. He's been having fits every day for two weeks, from the day they started the school year, and they've gotten so bad the school finally called us and Hewley in. His homeroom teacher said what all of us where thinking--that the boy's not right, that he's unstable. Hewley tried to blow it off and insisted Genesis was just a 'normal little boy', but who does she think she's kidding?

I put my foot down when we left, when the little monster got his way and they changed Hewley's son's homeroom, and told her to either tell me what we were in for and why ShinRa had given us that child, or else I was shipping him back or putting him in the first orphanage that would take him. She told us how he was defective and would degrade and worse, told us about the _things_ he might be able to do and how his cells would react to other cells by trying to take them over, and then threatened us quite nicely when I said I was done, ShinRa could take their failed experiment _back_. There was no giving him back, ShinRa wouldn't allow it, and if anything happened to the boy or any signs he wasn't being cared for, well, we were set up nicely thanks to ShinRa, and it'd be a shame if Iapetus lost his position as mayor or there were problems with the Rhapsodos orchards.

She's ShinRa through and through, for all she quit. I almost wonder what leash they've got that bitch on, for her to be jerking ours so much. She may be bluffing, but we can't afford the risk. She hadn't wanted to tell us anything, but she full well knows that we can make her life as difficult as she can make ours.

Only _we're_ the ones saddled with a Chímaira of our very own.

I don't even know why I'm here right now, in his room in the middle of the night. Other than...other than I think I want to kill him. I want him out of my house, out of my life, and I'm chained to him. I want to put my hand over his mouth and hold it there until he won't move anymore. My hand had reached out before I knew it, and is pressed against his mouth. I hate the way his lips feel against my palm. I slide my hand down quickly, down to his throat.

Tiny little neck. Not much bigger than my wrist, almost. The skin there is soft, warm, almost like silk, and I feel disgusted just touching the little monster.

He's a gift, Adrasteia, since you...he's ShinRa's _gift_ for my loyalty.

A_ gift_.

My little 'gift' is starting to move, and I can feel his little pulse beating faster as my hand gets tighter around his neck. Just a little more, just a bit, it would be so _easy_.

I had better stop. ShinRa wouldn't take kindly to terminating their little failed experiment this way. And Hewley would never believe, now of all days, that I'd had nothing to do with him dying.

I should have given in to the urge to smother him in his sleep I'd had when he was an infant. No one would have questioned a tragic crib death.

It wasn't fair. I had miscarried every time I tried to have a baby, and yet someone had been able to bear this...this _abomination_. He should have been aborted, never should have been cobbled together, never should have _been, _not when all my babies died before they could even draw a breath. It wasn't _fair_.

I don't know when I started stroking his skin with my fingertips. The skin of his neck is warm, smooth, and I can feel it now that I'm not squeezing anymore. He's settled back into sleep, breaths quick and desperate but calming down. His neck is so small that the fingers of one hand reach around it, and shifting slightly has my pinky against his collarbone. It's small, delicate, and so breakable. I could break this hideous thing so easily. I trace his collarbone with my fingers, imagine catching it between my thumb and fingers and snapping it.

My hand is on his chest, and I can feel his warmth and his heart beating beneath my hand even through the thin cloth of his pajamas. I suppose if he were human, I would protective or something at how little he is, but I don't. Not when all I feel is _disgusted_. He never should have lived; my babies never should have died.

My hand is on his stomach now. It's soft and round and warm. I'm touching him more than I have since he was an infant; since before he started making me ill after my last miscarriage, the last one before the doctors told me I could truly never have a baby of my own, and I hired fresh-faced nannies to come in and touch him for me. His belly is smooth, without the faint scars that mar my own.

Hewley's words are coming back to me. I can't really be surprised. I'm thinking about how I can never reproduce on my own and of course that would make me think of how Hewley had said so dispassionately that this child's very cells could one day potentially create more of him from others. She didn't tell us the details, but I can't help but wonder how he'll do it, get his cells into someone else, and the sharp, disgusted laugh I let out catches me by surprises.

That will be a shock, I wager, as my hand drifts down lower, the first time he has sex.

The very thought makes my skin crawl as my hand traces his immature sex. Oh, he won't have any problems; he's a beautiful child and the son of a rich man; he'll have women spreading for him as soon as he's old enough to do anything with this.

I _hate_ this child.

"Mother?" Genesis says, blinking sleepily and looking confused. I don't know when he woke up. "Why are you in--" he started, and it's all I can do not to snap his neck right there and scream for him to never call me 'Mother' again.

"Shh," I say instead, and smile. His eyes get big at that, so I reach down and stroked the little monster's hair. His hair is thick, the slippery texture of it displaying as much as his eye shape did the Wutai buried somewhere in him. One of his biological parents probably was from the some northern area; half of everyone in the northern half of the world had Wutai blood running through their veins because of all those invasions during the Warring Era. You can tell especially looking at Hewley and her son; they both had that black Wutai hair. Who knows where Genesis' red comes from.

The brat is smiling back now, like he's ecstatic, and I feel _sick_. Sick at touching the...the _monster_ that ShinRa had foisted on me, and hatred burns through me like a fire. He _is_ good--he knows how to charm people, he knows he's a beautiful little boy and how to win attention, and is trying to throw his little glamour on me with that smile. It makes me want to slap him, as hard as I can.

He's squirming around, and I know why. My other hand is right where it was before I noticed he was awake, and little beast that he is, he's _stirring_, and I clamp down, hard. Almost instantly he lets out a sharp little cry and his eyes fill with tears. "Shh," I said, stroking his hair again, but clamping down harder at every whimper he makes. "The more noise you make, the more it will hurt. So shh," I finish, and keep my voice soft.

He takes in one sharp, gulping breath and goes quiet, looking terrified, and I loosen my hand until it's just resting against him. He's shaking, but _quiet_. "There, that's a good boy," I say, smiling, when all I really wanted to do was pull out his hair, rip him apart and fling his genitals into the fields. I let my hand stroke over him instead, wherever I imagine digging my nails in and tearing him him to bits, and the more I want to scream, the gentler I make my voice shushing him. He's smiling for some stupid reason and he has no idea how much I want to slap him until he never smiles again, and so I'm touching that disgustingly soft skin of his cheeks and imagining myself digging my nails into them. Soon enough I'm only stroking his hair and his eyes are drifting back shut. He's smiling a little in his sleep, as if he's happy, and I can feel the corners of my own lips turning up, but it's not a smile he would like. I'm smiling because I'm imagining everything I _could_ do to him, replaying that terrified look from before in my mind.

When he's asleep again, I leave. I feel better, less like I need to scream and fling things, do all the things I _can't_ because I know Hewley will be watching like a hawk now.

Fine, let her. This is never happening again, after all. I never want to touch the disgusting little chimera again. I'd never liked touching him anyway--it was like some part of me knew he wasn't human and pulled away instinctively. I never touched him unless I had to--I hired nannies for that, and replaced them if they got to close--and I'll never touch him again. He'll just write this off as a dream, especially since tomorrow I'll act the same and snap at him if he's acting strange, and if he says anything tell him to learn to tell dreams from reality. All it will take is one 'Why would I go into your room at night?' to make him question everything. He's just a _child _and he doesn't seem to know real from imaginary half the time as it is.

He won't remember anything anyway. But I'll remember, remember how his pulse felt beneath my fingers and the terror in his wide eyes.

Sleep well.

You _m__onster._


End file.
